


Some Oysters Grow Many Pearls

by wildzubat



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Pre-Canon, bad attempts at the limsa dialect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 10:41:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3933721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildzubat/pseuds/wildzubat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes during clear Ul'dah nights, when F'lhaminn is asleep and the world seems at peace, Thancred and Minfilia watch the stars and talk. This is one such conversation.</p>
<p>Takes place several years before 1.0. An idea of how she may have learned a little more of one who is ever reluctant to talk about his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Oysters Grow Many Pearls

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for half-assed attempt at how they speak in Limsa... Please pretend I did it right. imsosorry.
> 
> Slight spoilers for a bit of Thancred's backstory and Minfilia's I guess, but no more than you find in Tales from the Calamity: The Walker's Path.

F’lhaminn is asleep in the house below, exhausted from a day of dancing and singing for a grand celebration of something or other. But the night is clear and cool, and Minfilia is not yet weary enough for sleep. So Thancred keeps her company, and they lie upon the rooftop and watch the stars overhead.

Ul’dah is so quiet at night, in sharp contrast to the noisy bustle of the day. It grows so cold on the clearest nights, but it is peaceful and the twinkling lamplight through countless windows amid shadowed stone makes a fair compliment to the stars overhead.

They speak softly of the day, of whatever new rumors wag the tongues in the marketplace, of chocobos, of the city’s latest shift in political clime. But the small talk runs out, and silence overtakes them for a time ere one breaks it with deeper thoughts and questions. This is in some sense routine, and this time it is Minfilia, pensive and thinking of the past:

“What is the earliest thing you can remember?”

He doesn’t answer right away, and for a moment she wonders if he heard, but a glance to the side sees him furrow his brow in thought. Moreover, though he had been bouncing one leg, he is now unusually, perfectly still.

He remembers warm laughter and a feeling of safety. But the earliest distinct memory…

_Sunshine. Afternoon, a warm salty breeze, sand beneath his feet and crusting on his legs and arms. A man – his father – crouched beside him, prying open an oyster with a knife. ‘If’n we’re lucky,’ he says, ‘there’ll be a pearl.’ There is a pearl. Small and shimmering bright. A little misshapen but pretty all the same._

_‘Do ye ken how a pearl is made, Thancred?’ No, he doesn’t. ‘A piece o’ sand gets into the oyster’s shell, an’ rather’n let the sand scratch an’ hurt too deep, oyster coats it what it can’t hurt it anymore. Keeps it as a treasure.’_

Until the seafolk take the oyster from its home to eat and to steal its treasure. But that isn’t part of the memory – that’s a later addition.

_‘Some oysters ne’re get a speck, but some get a whole bunch an’ they’ve a whole mess o’ pearls. S’best to be like an oyster when sand gets inside ye, though. Endure an’ make a pearl outta it. Some o’ the best parts o’ man come from adversity.’_

And some of the worst. That, too, is a later addition.

And none of this is anything he says aloud. Instead, he lies – or, rather, leaves out most of the truth. “The sea.”

He was silent too long, she thinks, for it to be so simple, but she’d half expected him to brush the question off entirely, and the answer he does give is enough to intrigue her. Two words far more telling than so many of the other half-truths and outright lies he’s given. Thancred is a mystery to her in many ways, and sometimes she doesn’t know why she trusts him so, when he tells her so little in return.

“I’ve never seen the sea,” she admits, still watching him though his eyes remain on the stars.

“We are but a few days journey from the Silver Bazaar or the more populous Vesper Bay, should you wish to. ‘Tis much akin to the desert, in its own way. Vast. Treacherous. Beautiful. And when the sun glints off it right, just as blinding. But it is blue and salty and wet and has much more life teaming beneath.”

There is little poetry in his description, and she wonders if that means he doesn’t like it much. Minfilia tries to imagine it. She’s seen drawings and paintings and tapestries of the sea. Heard stories.

“And pirates instead of bandits,” she supplies, thinking of the exciting tales of far off Limsa Lominsa. “And… Sahagin, is it? Instead of Amalj’aa.”

“Mm. What of you? What is your earliest memory?” Thancred looks at her now, as it is her turn to turn her eyes back to the stars.

She heaves a sigh. This is, after all, where her thoughts had drifted and prompted the question to begin with. “My mother… singing me to sleep.” He says nothing to that, and so after a few moments she explains, “I heard a similar song today. Another refugee from… from Ala Mhigo was singing it as she worked. I haven’t thought about her in a long time, but… it brought her so strongly to mind…”

Minfilia bites her lip as she trails off. It still hurts to think of what once was home, but it is a duller ache now. And then, glancing back to Thancred, she takes a chance. “What was your mother like?” He’s never said a thing about his parents, and given his itinerant lifestyle, she can only assume they too are gone.

He debates telling her that they should get some sleep. Finding some way to avoid this. In the end, though, he says, “I don’t remember.” Not quite a lie. Not quite the truth. He doesn’t want to remember.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, but he shakes his head and surprises her anew with a further admission.

“I grew up in the alleys and wharfs of Limsa Lominsa. I don’t remember either parent.”

“Were you a pirate?” she blurts before she can stop herself.

He makes a noise somewhere between amused and scoffing. “No. Just a common street thief.” And more in time. She already knows some of his skill with a blade. He bears no desire to tell her how he learned it. “Until a man offered me the chance for something more. My mentor.”

“Something more?”

“Life as an honest bard able to travel the land is an improvement by far.” Thancred sits up before she can ask another question and smirks. “Isn’t it high time you got some sleep? You’ll never grow taller if you stay up all hours.”

Honest. It almost makes her laugh – save that this is perhaps the most honest she has seen him in a while. So she lets it go and instead sits up as well, rising to his bait and making a face and crossing her arms.

“Hmph. Are you speaking from experience?”

He laughs lightly and stands, hopping off the side onto the balcony below. He balances on the railing, offering her a hand to help her down more gracefully. Though she debates not taking it out of spite, the small part of her that sometimes grows giddy with heights thinks better of it. He flicks her ponytail (causing her to scowl at him and shove him away with her elbow) and bids her goodnight as she turns to her room to shed her dusty day clothes and prepare for sleep. Filled with an odd sense of regret, she pauses in the doorway, however, and glances back at him latching the door to the balcony. He’s wearing his masks again, and she has a feeling that is the last she’ll see of what’s beneath for a long time to come.

Which is, of course, exactly why she resolves to make him tell her more. One way or another, someday she wants to solve that mystery. 


End file.
